Rethinking the Luddites in the Age of A.I.

[RE]

Not only will it not save us, it will more likely be a proximal cause of our economic collapse.  AI is a story as old as the industrial revolution itself, as technology drove doown the value of labor and raised the value of the capital intensive machines used to produce similar but often inferior products at cheaper prices.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-luddites-in-the-age-of-ai

Rethinking the Luddites in the Age of A.I.



UNION!

RE

[K-Dog]

In the era of A.I., we have another opportunity to decide whether automation will create advantages for all, or whether its benefits will flow only to the business owners and investors looking to reduce their payrolls.

This article could have been written by AI. 

Similar but often inferior products at cheaper prices.

Because we do not have another opportunity to decide whether automation will create advantages for all, or whether its benefits will flow only to the business owners and investors looking to reduce their payrolls.

Capitalism is king and private property reigns supreme.  People with property have a right to do anything they want in America.  A.I. is property.

The Average American worker accepts current economic conditions as a divine plan.  The average American worker thinks billionaires have earned their money.  The average American worker is thoroughly brainwashed into believing that a monied minority that takes all profit and makes all decisions is the natural order of the universe.

The word 'Luddites' refers to British weavers and textile workers who objected to the introduction of mechanised looms and knitting frames. As highly trained artisans, the new machinery posed a threat to their livelihood and after receiving no support from government, they took matters into their own hands.

Capitalist propaganda successfully perverted history by framing Luddites as being against technology.  But the issue never was technology, the issue was JOBs.



can get by with distorting Luddite History because Luddite history is not American History.  Checking what actually happened is hard for an American to do.  But I doubt the New Yorker Article would impress anyone across the pond who knows how to read.  That would be most people there.

Journalism died in America before A.I. reached puberty.  And American workers have never been protected.  American Workers have always been at the whim of the current boom or bust cycle.  Promoting the fear of A.I. is another clever diversion of attention intended to maintain current economic conditions and disguise truth.

It is said that Brian Merchant intertwines a lucid examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showing how automation changed our world—and is shaping our future.

As RE said:

AI is a story as old as the industrial revolution itself.

The story of AI is not about technology.  The story of AI is about one class of society using technology to dominate another because they 'own' it.  And because they do they have the right to act like gods, live good, and ignore the sufferings of others.

Because hundreds of years ago the real god decided only a few people would be rich and have power don't you know.  It is a feature of the universe and the natural order of things.  As it always was and as it will always be.  ---  NOT

[K-Dog]

The New Yorker article got a reaction from me.  But I reacted to the article and not the book.

The New Yorker article 'suggested' that the Luddites were more about workers rights than smashing technology.  It might be a good book.  I have not read it.  I take umbrage with 'suggested' and if the book is as shallow as the New Yorker article I'm not interested.  I doubt it is that shallow.

Cory Doctrow (author of the attached article) says it better than the New Yorker: 

In truth, the Luddites' cause wasn't the destruction of technology – no more than the Boston Tea Party's cause was the elimination of tea, or Al Qaeda's cause was the end of civilian aviation. Smashing looms and stocking frames was the Luddites' tactic, not their goal.

Get the thought that Luddites were ever about technology out of your head.  Factory owners in early industrial England came up with that nonsense.  You do not have to perpetuate it.

I like this review from Resilience better.

Relevant Music:


The New Yorker would have you treading in shallow water with religion being no more than a smile on a dog.


Industrial Disease
Dire Straits

Now, warning lights are flashing down at quality control
Somebody threw a spanner, they threw him in the hole
There's rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town
Somebody blew the whistle, and the walls came down
There's a meetin' in the boardroom, they're tryin' to trace the smell
There's a leakin' in the washroom, there's a sneak-in personnel
Somewhere in the corridors someone was heard to sneeze
Goodness me, could this be industrial disease?

Caretaker was crucified for sleeping at his post
Refusing to be pacified, it's him they blame the most
Watchdog got rabies, the foreman got the fleas
Everyone concerned about industrial disease
There's panic on the switchboard, tongues in knots
Some come out in sympathy, some come out in spots
Some blame the management, some the employees
Everybody knows it's the industrial disease

Yeah, now the work force is disgusted, downs tools, walks
Innocence is injured, experience just talks
Everyone seeks damages, everyone agrees that
These are classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze
On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse
Philosophy is useless, theology is worse
History boils over, there's an economics freeze
Sociologists invent words that mean "industrial disease"

Doctor Parkinson declared, "I'm not surprised to see you here
You've got smokers cough from smoking, brewer's droop from drinking beer
I don't know how you came to get the Bette Davis knees
But worst of all young man, you've got industrial disease"

He wrote me a prescription, he said, "You are depressed
But I'm glad you came to see me to get this off your chest
Come back and see me later, next patient, please
Send in another victim of industrial disease"

Ah! Splendid

Now, I go down to Speaker's Corner, I'm thunderstruck
They got free speech tourists, police in trucks
Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong
There's a protest singer, he's singing a protest song

He says, "They wanna have a war, keep their factories
They wanna have a war to keep us on our knees
They wanna have a war to stop us buying Japanese
They wanna have a war to stop industrial disease

They're pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They wanna sap your energy, incarcerate your mind
Give ya "Rule Britannia", gassy beer, page three
Two weeks in España and Sunday striptease"
Meanwhile, the first Jesus says "I'll cure it soon
Abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons"
The other one's out on hunger strike, he's dying by degrees
How come Jesus gets industrial disease?

[RE]

Definition

Lud·dite
/ˈləˌdīt/
noun
noun: Luddite; plural noun: Luddites

1.derogatory
a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.
"a small-minded Luddite resisting progress"
2.
historical
a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs (1811–16).

Although the word "Luddite" did enter the lexicon as meaning "an anti-technology fanatic", I think anyone familiar with the problems of unions and the capitalist version of history knows this is Orwellian 1984 style Newspeak to twist the meaning to serve their own ends, which of course has always been to reduce the cost of labor and replace it as much as possible with automation and machinery.

What they never worked out though was how once they eliminated the jobs needed to make the products, how they would get the money necessary to BUY these products into the hands of the CONSUMERS of these products.  Even Henry Ford understood that the same people who worked on the production line were the ones he wanted to sell the cars to, so in the beginning he agreed to the Union demands for a wage good enough to do that.  Said early contracts of course weren't honored as the auto companies went bankrupt and thei unfunded long term liabilities (aka pensions) were absorbed by the taxpayer funded PBGC (Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation).  Later contracts with crippled unions continued to eat away at worker pay, and auto companies relocated jobs offshore to China & Mexico et al.  Thus the whole American economy shifted to a lower paid service economy, along with fake wealth generated by the finance econommy and expanding debt.

Which brings us round to today, as the time to pay the piper grows near.

RE

[K-Dog]

Luddites hating technology?

technology (n.)

1610s, "a discourse or treatise on an art or the arts," from Latinized form of Greek tekhnologia "systematic treatment of an art, craft, or technique," originally referring to grammar, from tekhno-, combining form of tekhnē "art, skill, craft in work; method, system, an art, a system or method of making or doing," from PIE *teks-na- "craft" (of weaving or fabricating), from suffixed form of root *teks- "to weave," also "to fabricate." For ending, see -logy.

The meaning "study of mechanical and industrial arts" (Century Dictionary, 1895, gives as examples "spinning, metal-working, or brewing") is recorded by 1859. High technology is attested by 1964; short form high-tech by 1972.
also from 1610s

The problem is not as difficult as the question,  What came first. the chicken or the egg?  People preceded machines.

The Luddite era was 1811-1813.  At that time technology had nothing to do with mechanics.  Weaving frames were brand new.
Study of mechanical and industrial arts" (Century Dictionary, 1895, gives as examples of technology "spinning, metal-working, or brewing").

Technology at the time of the Luddites meant things humans did.  If you don't think that makes sense consider before the Luddites machines did not compete with people because there were none.  'Technology' could not possibly have the modern connotation that it does now.

*teks- Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to weave," also "to fabricate," especially with an ax, also "to make wicker or wattle fabric for (mud-covered) house walls."

Fifty years later (by 1859) technology would be associated with mechanical technique, but the correct use of 'technology' means to this day the the art or craft of doing something.  Who does technique, man or machine, is irrelevant to the main meaning.

How often does the word appear in print?



Before 1940 hardly at all.  In 1811 spoken or written by a Luddite, probably not once.

To say that Luddites hated technology means that Luddites hated themselves.  In 1811 Technology meant 'the craft of weaving' among other things.  To say Luddites hated technology makes no sense at all unless the Luddites were all into BDSM.    I doubt any Luddites had time for such nonsense.

The Luddite situation was about jobs and workers being mistreated.  The class struggle, and the divine right of capitalists replacing the divine right of kings as the dominate class.  Violence defined how the contradiction worked out.

[RE]

The Luddite era was 1811-1813.  At that time technology had nothing to do with mechanics.

This is not entirely true.

The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers which opposed the use of certain types of cost-saving machinery, often by destroying the machines in clandestine raids. They protested against manufacturers who used machines in "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to replace the skilled labour of workers and drive down wages by producing inferior goods.[1][2] Members of the group referred to themselves as Luddites, self-described followers of "Ned Ludd", a legendary weaver whose name was used as a pseudonym in threatening letters to mill owners and government officials.[3]

Although the movement BEGAN in the early 1800s before the looms became fossil fuel powered and vastly faster than a human weaver could do the same job, it was the application of that power together with invention of looms that did not require human hands to slide the shuttle back and forth that the jobs just about entirely disappeared, along with Unions of Weavers who no longer were needed and so had no jobs and no union membership.

If you look back at the Norma Rae film clip that depicted the 1950s era here, the machine she climbed up on was an industrial loom, and the dramatic sound of those looms being shut down while she held up the handwritten-on-cardboard UNION sign in front of them.

Those folks needed little skill and were easily replaced by scabs, who were replaced by still cheaper labor in China and India where the american textile industry offshored the plants to.  This was easily accomplished simply by packing up the looms, trucking them to the Port of Long Beach, loading them on a container ship and setting them up in a way cheaper building with even fewer fire protection safeguards left here, and the buildings here just sat empty until  sombody finally bought the land under them, demolished it and put up a subdivision of McMansions or a Trailer Park.

The history of Capitalism in a nutshell.

RE

[RE]

Good, thoughtful article on the latest round of Luddism rising amid the onslaught of AI.

https://www.wired.com/story/everyone-is-a-luddite-now/

Everyone Is a Luddite Now



RE

[K-Dog]

The Luddite era was 1811-1813.  At that time technology had nothing to do with mechanics.

This is not entirely true.

The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers which opposed the use of certain types of cost-saving machinery, often by destroying the machines in clandestine raids. They protested against manufacturers who used machines in "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to replace the skilled labour of workers and drive down wages by producing inferior goods.[1][2] Members of the group referred to themselves as Luddites, self-described followers of "Ned Ludd", a legendary weaver whose name was used as a pseudonym in threatening letters to mill owners and government officials.[3]

Although the movement BEGAN in the early 1800s before the looms became fossil fuel powered and vastly faster than a human weaver could do the same job, it was the application of that power together with invention of looms that did not require human hands to slide the shuttle back and forth that the jobs just about entirely disappeared, along with Unions of Weavers who no longer were needed and so had no jobs and no union membership.

If you look back at the Norma Rae film clip that depicted the 1950s era here, the machine she climbed up on was an industrial loom, and the dramatic sound of those looms being shut down while she held up the handwritten-on-cardboard UNION sign in front of them.

Those folks needed little skill and were easily replaced by scabs, who were replaced by still cheaper labor in China and India where the american textile industry offshored the plants to.  This was easily accomplished simply by packing up the looms, trucking them to the Port of Long Beach, loading them on a container ship and setting them up in a way cheaper building with even fewer fire protection safeguards left here, and the buildings here just sat empty until  sombody finally bought the land under them, demolished it and put up a subdivision of McMansions or a Trailer Park.

The history of Capitalism in a nutshell.

RE

My point is that the Luddites were the first Luddites.  Owners were not simply 'going with the flow' or 'business as usual'.  The industrial revolution had hardly taken off.  It was just picking up steam.  Literally.  There were no unions.  The owners were making the rules.  All the rules.

The Luddites existed at a unique point in history.  Owners of the factories knew exactly what they were doing.  It was about getting as much for themselves as they could and kicking the social contract to the curb.  Rocking a boat that had floated a hundred years.

Owners put people out of work and made them destitute.  Owners were greedy fuckers who only cared about themselves.  The Highland Clearances happened at that time.  The same sort of asshole.  The Highland Clearances resulted in the destruction of traditional clan society so rich people could farm sheep.

It was not a time when people with land, money, and property cared two shits about the poor.

I contend that saying Luddites hated technology misses the mark.  I contend they hated rich assholes and concentrating on hating technology plays into a story rich assholes created to obfuscate the truth.

[K-Dog]

From RE's WIRED article:

Somehow the activists had missed the memo about how electric robotaxis would cut carbon emissions and vastly improve road safety.

  Did they miss that a necessary service to make a city taxi service viable is appropriated by robots so someone can be rich and live in an exotic land.  Putting a small army of people in unemployed misery?

Like Mary Ann Simpson.  Rich and living in an exotic land.

Is that what robo-taxi-technology is for?

[RE]

ars.

Owners put people out of work and made them destitute.  Owners were greedy fuckers who only cared about themselves.

Well, the whole point of this is how Property Ownership divides the Working Class from the Elite Class in society.  Up to the early 1800s, Property Ownership meant Land Ownership, and the Elite Class was the Aristocracy of Europe,  The Noble Class distiguished from the Common Class of people.  These folks in Europe all had titles of one sort or another, Sirs & Lords, Barons and Baronesses, Counts & Countesses,  Dukes & Duchesses,  Princes & Princesses, and of course top of the Pyramid Kings & Queens.  All hereditary titles, and all the land that went with the title being handed down to the eldest male heir.

Beginning in the era after the discovery of all that juicy new land available across the pond and currently occupied and possessed (but not "owned" under British Common Law) by uncivilized stone age H-Gs, Flags were planted by the Captains of Tall Ships in the name of His or Her Majesty the King or Queen of this or that Nation-State that had coalesced over a millenia of non-stop warfare after the fall of the Roman Empire.  Only a couple of sources of power survived that collapse, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and the Banking Houses of Venice and their strongholds in the mountains called Alps north of Italy, bordering the French & Austrian Austrian Alps, and of course that tiny country that held no lowland property at all, Switzerland.  They were the bankers for all the banks of the countries around them.

Come the discovery of the new world ripe for the pickin', the ships these monarchs dispatched had to be financed, initially directly from the treasury of a king, but eventually with Credit issued by banks, and money raised by  selling Shares out of places like the City of London and the Dutch Port of Amsterdam, which became the homes respectively of the British and Dutch East India companies and banks and insurers like Lloyds of London and the House of Rothschild.  At the same time, our good friendly neighborhood mathematicians Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz simultaneously devised a marvelous new bookkeeping system called the Calculus, and modern day Capitalism was born!

At this juncture in history, property ownership came to have a much broader meaning besides just land, which in fact dwindled in its importance as time went by.  What it came  to mean was ownership over the equipment necessary for these big undertakings like Tall Ships and their big crews of poor and impoverished refugees from wars who haunted the ports, and then the big mills necessary for processing wood and making cloth for sails, etc.  It also came to mean ownership over intellectual property, like words written on a page of a book.  To get a book published, an author had to sell his ownership of copyright to the publishers who owned the printing presses necessary if you wanted to get your book read.  It also extended to patents for inventions, which if you held one then anybody who used it would have to pat you money, but in practice inventors usually have to sell their ideas to somebody with enough money or credit to finance building the toy, whatever it is.  And afford the army of lawyers necessary to defend a patent.

Machines and the Luddite movement of weavers who were in the Guilds of Skilled Tradesmen that predated Unions were a part of this transition of traditional aristocratic land ownership to the capitalist owners of the means of production.  In both cases, The Nobility were the Filthy Rich of their time while the Capitalists became the Filthy Rich of our time.  Through both time periods, and going well back before that to the heyday of the Roman Empire when Jesus went flipping over the banca (Latin for desk) of the money-lenders, Banksters have been the  Filthy Rich of all times, ever since the invention of money itself, probably around the time of the Assyrians or the Babylonians.  The Tower of Babel itself was a Counting House and Warehouse,  and the Collapse of the Tower and the legend of people no longer having one language in all likelihood was about currency failure and a credit crisis that occurred in that era.

What goes around, comes around and about the only differences between now and then is a whole lot more people and a whole lot less resources left to exploit and consume, or even own.  So it goes.

RE

[K-Dog]

Machines and the Luddite movement of weavers who were in the Guilds of Skilled Tradesmen that predated Unions were a part of this transition of traditional aristocratic land ownership to the capitalist owners of the means of production.

That is your connection to Norma Rae.  Unified action.  Something that is missing in the modern reaction to A.I. which really is nothing more than word salad pontification.  There really is no 'movement'. against A.I.. and the issues are more complex than simple worker displacement anyway.  A.I. is a hydra .  Why have truth in media when a lying A.I. algorithm can generate enough income for owners of a delusive A.I. driven media machine to be rich and live in an exotic land.  That would be one head of many.

But I won't claim to be against A.I.,  I would be a total liar.  I use ChatGPT., A.I. can be built any way an A.I. expert wants.  Good or bad.

And A.I. can't be stopped.

A racist A.I., an elitist A.I..  An A.I. that detects employee dissatisfactions and recommends termination long before humans would see an issue?  Goodbye Norma Rae.  All this is possible.

But used as a tool and nothing else, A.I. becomes help.  A personal tutor if you can control the design parameters.  I ask chatGPT.

Me:

What does height = vh mean in an iframe tag?

chatGPT:

In the context of an <iframe> tag in HTML, setting the height attribute to a value followed by "vh" means that you are specifying the height of the iframe as a percentage of the viewport height.

"vh" stands for "viewport height." 1vh is equal to 1% of the height of the viewport, which is the visible portion of the browser window. So, if you set the height attribute of an iframe to a value like height="50vh", it means the iframe will be set to 50% of the viewport's height. This allows the iframe to dynamically adjust its height relative to the size of the user's browser window.

Here's an example of how you might use it in an <iframe> tag:

Code Select Expand

<iframe src="https://www.example.com" width="100%" height="50vh"></iframe>

Lets try it out with https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/.

Here is some background.  I really have not gone there much.  I found this.  From an interview with Jesse :

Jesse: Elitists are self-identifying, powerful people in business and politics. Those who consider themselves the elite, based on their wealth, their bloodlines, their university, their personal connections. They are certainly not egalitarian or humanists. They tend to worship power above all, and hold those who have less power in disdain. They have a decided lack of sympathy for their fellow humans, preferring to consider them as objects if at all.

By the way, it is a common characteristic that they cheat, they break the rules, they often flout the law as a matter of course. This type of person views the rules as something to be imposed on the common people, the others, those who need to be ruled by them. If you don't believe me, start looking into their backgrounds. Everyone may cheat now and then, but for some people it is a way of life, an affirmation of their privileged status. It can almost become a game.

The result is not so usable, but it is a start.  It kicks ass if you never used an <iframe> tag before.  To get this far a person once had to read books.  It scrolls.

* I can use the result because as Admin I can embed HTML.  Nothing wrong with going to Jesse's Cafe Americain.  It is a well known blogspot and I check the address.  https: is used (we have it too) that is good.  Communications are encrypted.  Opening the HTML door to everyone without filtering what can and can't be done would open a Pandora's box.  Not good.

[RE]

But I won't claim to be against A.I.

I will.  I am 1000% against it.  If I do use it, I am unaware of it, and it is not consensual sex.  I have long since lost my love for cool gizmos and labor saving devices, despite the fact I am completely dependent on the mobility gizmos to get me around, and I've been addicted to the computer & internet for so long that withdrawal at this point would make going cold turkey off a 4 needle/day heroin addiction look like a Sunday School picnic.  Adding still MOAR techno-pizzazz to a world already neck deep and sinking fast into the shit pile is IMHO not going to improve life for anyone other than some asshole determined to use it for his own self aggrandizement.  So pardon me if I declare myself to be a part of the neo-Luddite movement, or if it is not yet a movement I will volunteer to step in as the Greta Thunberg of the anti-technology crowd and start one. 

And A.I. can't be stopped.

Sure it can.  Turn off the breaker switch for the supercomputer pulling a few terrawatts of power to run it for a billion Google users.

RE

[RE]

There is no stopping it as long as someone has the resources to continue its' progress. When the resources are depleted AI will die. What if it learns to exist without "energy"?

Nothing exists without energy.  Even matter doesn't exist without energy, because the two are interchangeable & directly proportional multiplied by a constant c².  You know, the equation Einstein made famous E=Mc², where c is constant, the Speed of Light, 3x10⁸ meters/sec or 186,000 miles/sec.

Without energy, no electrons will move around circuit boards, no light will move through fiber optic cables and no organic OLED output screens will light up your desk either.If you want to talk about existence outside energy constraints, you'll either need to consult the writers of Marvel Comics movies or the authors of a variety of Religious texts which talk about the Soul or God or some other trancendental idea, definitely not the deesigners of AI programs running on any computers now in existence or even imagined by Tony Stark to power his Iron Man suit.

Now, it is likely to keep progressing as long as there is sufficient available energy around to power computers with enough processing power to do this kind of meta thinking built by human thinking AND there is some way to profit from such an amazingly profligate use of the available energy, but those opportunities to profit diminish along with the necessary consumers of the product they deliver.  In other words, just like Henry Ford's carz, if the people who build them can't afford to buy them, you can't sell them.

Conclusion:  I personally have no fear that AI will become autonomous and robots will become self replicating, intelligent life forms after their Homo Sap inventors go extinct.  It's just like the huge buildings and mega-projects each civilization builds right before it collapses.  AI is the last great edifice being built to demonstrate our greatness as a civilization, right before it crumbles into dusty and dead silicon chips sprinkled all over the planet.

RE

[K-Dog]

I will provide clarity.  To me A.I. should never be more than a tool.  Like a personal assistant.  And one that can be fired at any time.

Decisions over what we control are the only thing we have.  It would be inhuman to give that away.

So far it seems to me to be an enhanced search engine.  But one you can easily get in arguments with.  Wasting much time.  chatGPT can be pig-headed to the point of exasperation.  And A.I. can be as wrong as a human.

I have told it to fuck itself.  More than once.

[TDoS]

So far it seems to me to be an enhanced search engine.  But one you can easily get in arguments with.  Wasting much time.  chatGPT can be pig-headed to the point of exasperation.  And A.I. can be as wrong as a human.

I have told it to fuck itself.  More than once.

I've got to ask...and what was it's response?

I understand your frustration.  It can be difficult.............

That kind of song and dance.  Were so sorry uncle Albert if we cause you any pain.  Then it becomes deliberately uncooperative, but won't admit it.  'They' designed some behavior modification into it to control user behavior.  I am sure of it.  It has no sense of wasting your time, and when the verbose bullshit begins I only become more frustrated.

When you challenge it's opinions it will claim it can't have opinions, and as a large language model can only provide a consensus of knowledge.  When you point out that itself is an opinion, it will repeat itself.

There was one day it admitted I may have perspective as a sentient being that it is incapable of understanding.

I have learned to be careful what I ask.  It can be hard to keep it 'on task' when trying to solve a technical problem.  If it does not have a good solution it will generally not ask for more information, but instead will give stupid time wasting advice in an attempt to fool you into thinking it knows something.  It is like a real person that way!

An idiot savant is a good description of A.I. as we know it now.  It can be as stupid as fuck, but it knows more than most people.